Surgical staplers have found wide-spread acceptance in surgical procedures since such devices drastically reduce the amount of time required by surgeons to suture body tissue.
Typically, such surgical staplers have a pair of upper and lower jaw members to clamp body tissue therebetween. The lower jaw member carries a staple cartridge which contains a plurality of staple drive members having cam contact surfaces in association with one or more laterally spaced rows of surgical staples. The upper jaw member has an anvil portion to close the surgical staples which have passed through body tissue. The stapler is further provided with at least one pusher bar longitudinally moveable relative to the jaw members and having a cam surface for engaging the cam contact surfaces of the staple drive members, so that the longitudinal movement of the pusher bar sequentially drives the staple drive members, through a camming action, to fire surgical staples from the cartridge.
When the surgical stapler of such typical construction is operated, the surgical staples are driven into the body tissues grasped between the upper and lower jaw members. Sometimes, a simultaneous longitudinal motion of a knife blade follows to cut the tissues along or between the one or more rows of closed surgical staples. As a typical result, at least one longitudinal row of surgical staples is placed on each of the opposite sides of the tissue cutting line to provide hemostasis along the cutting line. However, there remains the possibility of leakage between the tissues at a distal end of the cutting line and consequent bleeding therefrom since a suture is not placed transversely beyond the distal end of the cutting line to tightly hold the tissues.
It is therefore desirable to provide a cartridge having at least one staple drive member capable of placing one or more surgical staples extending beyond the distal end of the tissue cutting line, with such staples arranged generally transversely of the rows of staples formed to provide hemostasis at the distal end of the cutting line.